Skill: Conceptualisation and Contextualisation
Key Skill: The ability to identify a need for information and facts needed to draw a conclusion, the nature and extent of that information and potential sources of information.
Figure 1: Image generated using Copilot from prompt: "Image of Conceptualisation".
You now understand the context of the information sources available to you, but the skill with which you can identify why you need these sources in the first place can take practice. The ability to ask the right questions of resources can save you time and increase your chances of finding the information that you need (Grix and Watkins, 2010, p. 62). The assessments that you need to complete at university will certainly require you to draw conclusions. These should be based upon what you have learnt in class and what you have discovered through your own reading (Neville, 2009, p. 30). The practice of these skills, however, does not end with your time at Derby: employers will be expecting you to be able to use them when you are at work. We will now take some time to explore these skills in a practical way.
Example Scenario:
Figure 2: Image generated using Copilot from prompt: "Electric Car in Traffic".
Identify a need for information: Let’s imagine that you are writing an essay or perhaps working for a city council and want to find out if electric vehicles (EVs) affect traffic congestion in cities. You cannot reach a conclusion about this topic without information. A conclusion without information and facts may be acceptable for your opinion amongst friends, but not when producing an academic or a professional piece of work—opinions may even contradict the body of evidence available about a topic (Cottrell, 2013, p.)
Facts needed to draw a conclusion: If you are writing an essay, you will need to formulate an argument to lead to a conclusion based upon your essay title. If you are working for the city council, then you may need to use facts to report a conclusion back to your team for potential implementation of your findings. Some relevant facts to reach a conclusion might centre upon the number of EVs on our roads, the number of non-EVs owners, the charging infrastructure related to EVs, or the relationship between traffic congestion and vehicle type.
The nature and extent of information: You now need to think about what information you are going to need to reach a conclusion based upon the facts that you want to explore (Grix and Watkins, 2010, p. 11). The nature of information for your EV report might include academic journals—what researchers said about the topic—quantitative evidence from previous studies, reports from industry, case studies from organisations that have also explored this topic, and, more than likely, data sets about traffic congestion. The extent of information—in other words how much you will need and how widely you will have to read—will differ depending on your topic, but a good rule of thumb is to use sources that contribute the most to your argument. Of course, you can still refer briefly to works that are less relevant to your work, but it is best to establish a strong evidence base that relates to your purposes and need (Cottrell, 2017, p.114).
Potential sources of information: We have already seen the specialist academic sources that are available to you in Skill: Seeking Relevant Information.[1] To find the latest academic research about EVs and congestion, you might begin by searching them. This article about how EV charging infrastructure may affect traffic congestion will certainly be of use to you, and so might this one, which argues that EVs may 'not' reduce traffic congestion. You might also want to search industry websites: perhaps Toyota or Honda have undertaken studies about this topic—although be aware of potential industry bias. Government websites and local councils will be an excellent source of information for traffic data and reports. If you can search as many sources as possible in a targeted way, then you will be able to reach evidence-based conclusions based upon the best available evidence.
You are, therefore, encouraged to use this type of critical thinking in your own work. Taking a little time to think about information needs, facts, sources, and the limits of investigation will always deliver positive outcomes. This guide will now demonstrate how you can use the same skills in a university-specific setting.
Conceptualisation and Searching Resources
The term concept can mean several things. You might hear someone say, ‘the concept of sustainable development.’ In this first instance, critical thinking is necessary to define what ‘sustainable development’ means for this person, as their interpretation of the concept will have implications for how you interpret their work. If you were writing an essay or delivering a paper, then, you need to clearly define to your audience exactly what you mean when introducing concepts (Grix and Watkins, 2010, p. 16). This relates to a second use of the term concept. Concepts and conceptualisation are extremely useful ways to find the connections that exist between ideas, which you can then use to reach conclusions (Greetham, 2016, p. 52). Literature searching lends itself very well to the connection of concepts to form search strategies, which you can then use in the relevant sources of information available to you.
Let’s return to the topic of electric vehicles and whether they affect traffic congestion in cities. This question has three conceptual elements: it’s about electric vehicles; it’s about traffic; and it’s about congestion.
Concept 1
Concept 1: Our first concept is electric vehicles. Different researchers around the world may describe electric vehicles in different ways in the work they produce. One author may write electric vehicle and another may write EV. Some may even use broader phrases like charging infrastructure or charging points with the understanding that the reader knows they are talking about electric vehicles in some way. In Seeking Relevant Information, you saw how an AI tool like CoPilot performs very well at finding synonyms for you from the prompts that you provide it (see Table 1). You still need to be a little cautious in the prompts you chose, however, because CoPilot’s responses do differ according to the prompts you provide—even if the prompts only slightly differ.
Table 1: Prompting CoPilot for Synonyms
You now have several words that relate to the concept of electric vehicles. To connect these different words in a resource like Library Search, you use a capital OR (or is more).[2] You can also use quotation marks to look for specific phrases. This example will select just some of the synonyms that are available. Because the concept has more than one word associated with it, you can use brackets to group the words together: (“electric vehicle” OR EV OR “charging infrastructure” OR “charging point”).
Concept 2
Concept 2: Our second concept is traffic, and the following synonyms appear to capture the concept well: (traffic OR transit OR transport OR vehicles).
Concept 3
Concept 3: Our third concept is congestion, and the synonyms might be: (congestion OR jam OR tailback OR hold-up OR gridlock OR queue).
You now must link all your concepts with a capital AND.[3] A Venn diagram—presented in two comparable ways below—is a good way to visualise the logic of what you are doing. The final search strategy looks like this:
Figure 3: Venn Diagrams of a three-concept search
(“electric vehicle” OR EV OR “charging infrastructure” OR “charging point”) AND (traffic OR transit OR transport OR vehicles) AND (congestion OR jam OR tailback OR hold-up OR gridlock OR queue)
You can now copy and paste this into relevant sources. The results are:
You are now ready to evaluate these information sources.
References
Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. and Tight, M. (2013) How to Research. 4th edn. Maidenhead: McGraw Hill Open University Press.
Copilot (2025) Image of critical thinking [Digital Art], response to Steven Bembridge, 28 March 2025.
Copilot (2025) Electric care in traffic [Digital Art], response to Steven Bembridge, 28 March 2025.
Cottrell, S. (2013) The Study Skills Handbook. 4th edn. London: Palgrave.
Cottrell, S. (2017) Critical Thinking Skills: Effective Analysis, Argument and Reflection. 3rd edn. London: Palgrave.
Greetham, B. (2016) Smart Thinking: How to Think Conceptually, Design Solutions and Make Decisions. London: Palgrave.
Grix, J. and Watkins, G. (2010) Information Skills: Finding and Using the Right Resources. London: Palgrave.
Neville, C. (2009) How to Improve your Assignment Results. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
[1] In a professional context you may find that your employer will not have the same extensive access to resources that you do at the university. Employers in disciplines like healthcare and law, however, will very likely provide their staff access to some academic databases and content.
[2] In natural language you will say something like ‘find me articles about electric vehicles and traffic congestion’. The information sources discussed in Seeking Relevant Information, however, work most effectively using logic. To get a resource like Library Search to search for the concepts “electric vehicle” and EV and “charging infrastructure” and “charging point”, you need to use OR. It is better to think of OR as the natural language phrase ‘as well as’. So, you want to look for “electric vehicle” as well as EV as well as “charging infrastructure” as well as “charging point”. You should now be able to see why using OR increases the number of results that you find—it is inclusive of all the terms you use (Blaxter et al., 2013, p. 113).
[3] The operator AND is the opposite of OR. Despite its natural-language-sounding name of adding up numbers, its logical effect is to decrease search results (Blaxter et al., 2013, p. 113). If you search Library Search using the following strategy traffic AND EV AND congestion, you will only find results that include all three words: in other words, where all three logical conditions are true. An OR, in contrast remember, is the same as traffic as well as EV as well as congestion (which increases).